Wireless Power Transfer: Survey and Roadmap

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of wireless power transfer technologies, analyzing their principles, strengths, weaknesses, current research themes, applications, and future challenges and roadmaps.

Contribution

It offers a detailed categorization of state-of-the-art WPT techniques and discusses open research challenges and future directions in the field.

Findings

Inductive coupling is effective for short-range power transfer.

Magnetic resonant coupling enables longer-distance wireless charging.

Electromagnetic radiation-based WPT is suitable for remote power delivery.

Abstract

Wireless power transfer (WPT) technologies have been widely used in many areas, e.g., the charging of electric toothbrush, mobile phones, and electric vehicles. This paper introduces fundamental principles of three WPT technologies, i.e., inductive coupling-based WPT, magnetic resonant coupling-based WPT, and electromagnetic radiation-based WPT, together with discussions of their strengths and weaknesses. Main research themes are then presented, i.e., improving the transmission efficiency and distance, and designing multiple transmitters/receivers. The state-of-the-art techniques are reviewed and categorised. Several WPT applications are described. Open research challenges are then presented with a brief discussion of potential roadmap.